'The Angels' Share' offers zany shot of redemption

By Walter Addiego

Updated 3:50 pm, Thursday, May 16, 2013

Photo: JOSS BARRATT

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An undated handout photo of a scene from Ken Loach's "The Angels' Share." Loach's film is about four unemployed Scottish scofflaws who cook up a scheme to steal a valuable cask of whisky. (Joss Barratt/Sixteen Films via The New York Times) -- NO SALES; FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY WITH STORY SLUGGED FILM-LOACH-ADV07 BY GRAHAM FULLER. ALL OTHER USE PROHIBITED. -- PHOTO MOVED IN ADVANCE AND NOT FOR USE - ONLINE OR IN PRINT - BEFORE APRIL 07, 2013. less

An undated handout photo of a scene from Ken Loach's "The Angels' Share." Loach's film is about four unemployed Scottish scofflaws who cook up a scheme to steal a valuable cask of whisky. (Joss Barratt/Sixteen ... more

Photo: JOSS BARRATT

'The Angels' Share' offers zany shot of redemption

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In some movies, liquor is the fast lane to hell, but in Ken Loach's "The Angels' Share," it's the high road to redemption. This is an unexpectedly breezy comedy for the veteran British director known for his socialist beliefs and gritty, sometimes grim depictions of working-class life.

These concerns aren't absent from "The Angels' Share,'' but they're less in the foreground than in some other Loach efforts.

As the film opens, Robbie (Paul Brannigan), an unemployed young Glasgow, Scotland, hothead, faces prison after an act of violence. He gets community service instead, because his girlfriend is pregnant. Robbie wants to do right by her and the child, but the odds are not good: There are no jobs, her father hates him, and a group of toughs wants to crack his skull.

But he gets a break in drawing the avuncular Harry (John Henshaw) as the boss of his work team. Harry's a decent fellow with a taste for good whiskey and offers Robbie a toast to celebrate his new fatherhood. Robbie relishes his dram. Harry takes Robbie and his other charges, a semi-comic band of screw-ups (Gary Maitland, William Ruane, Jasmin Riggins), to the Highlands to visit a distillery, where they (and we) are walked through the whiskey-making process.

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★★★ 1/2Review

"The Angels' Share"

Rated: Not rated

Running time: 101 minutes.

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It turns out that Robbie has a natural talent for sniffing out the finer points of the Scottish national drink. (The film's title, by the way, refers to the portion of whiskey that evaporates from the barrel during aging.)

At this point, "The Angels' Share" becomes a sort of zany caper film, not what we're used to from the director of "Kes" and "My Name Is Joe." The distillery is home to a priceless cask of ancient whiskey that may offer Robbie and cohorts the chance to buy themselves a new start.

No doubt some viewers will have trouble reconciling the film's earlier, harder edges — Robbie's deep frustrations, the scary levels of threatened violence and especially a scene in which Robbie is confronted by the man he victimized - with the lighter side that develops, such as when Robbie and pals don kilts to impersonate a club of whiskey connoisseurs.

I'd rather see it as Loach and longtime writing collaborator Paul Laverty offering a gift to Robbie, in the manner, say, of a playwright who decides to set a character free. Loach, now 76, is indulging himself and, after what he's accomplished, why shouldn't he?

Part of what makes the film work is the sometimes-intense performance by Brannigan, a first-time actor who comes from a troubled background not unlike that seen in the movie.